1. Cross Reference to Related Applications:
Reference is made to pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/688,587 filed Oct. 18, 2003 for a detailed description of a cooling systems and various heat transfer units and heat exchangers and their operation.
2. Description of the Related Art:
At the heart of data processing and telecommunication devices are processors and other heat-generating components which are becoming increasingly more powerful and generating increasing amounts of heat. As a result, more powerful cooling systems are required to prevent these components from thermal overload and resulting system malfunctions or slowdowns.
Traditional cooling approaches such as heat sinks and heat pipes are unable to practically keep up with this growing heat problem. Cooling systems which use a liquid or gas to cool these heat generating components are becoming increasingly more needed and viable. These systems utilize heat transfer units thermally coupled to the heat generating components for absorbing or extracting heat from the heat generating components into a coolant flowing there through. The coolant, now heated, is directed to a heat exchanger where heat is dissipated from the coolant, creating cooled coolant and returned to the heat transfer unit to repeat the cycle.
Liquid cooling for these heat generating components is a much viable approach to this heat problem. A typical liquid cooling system employs one or more heat transfer units thermally coupled to the heat generating components for absorbing heat from the components into the liquid coolant and a heat exchanger which dissipates heat from the coolant and returns cooled liquid to the heat transfer units.
The heat transfer unit is typically comprised of a housing with a cavity there through for the coolant to flow through. The contact surface (with the heat generating components) is preferably thin and has excellent thermal transfer capability, such as copper.
Many of the heat generating components of today and high powered microprocessors, in particular, are connected into the electronic system in which they will be used by means of connector. The connector is often wave-soldered into a motherboard and has receptacles for receiving the pins of the component and allows for easy insertion and extraction into and out of the motherboard. The component then is not subjected to of any mishaps that may incur during wave-soldering or whatever insertion method is used.
For today's powerful microprocessors, for example, a bulky, heavy heat sink or heat pipe dissipater must then be coupled to component and the motherboard for fastening and often causes problems such as breakage of the mother board from the substantial torques that must be generated to secure the entire assembly and even shipping damage from the heavy weight of the air cooled cooling devices.
Thus, there is a need in the art for a method and apparatus for both securing the component to the system or motherboard and to provide efficient and powerful cooling of the component at the same time.